20 Classic Hollywood Stars Who Make Lindsay Lohan Look Like a Saint

Whether it is Lindsay Lohan's boozing or Miley Cyrus' twerking, it seems like there is a new scandal buzzing through the Internet on a daily basis. With each new Hollywood trainwreck, there is an outpouring of outrage from all corners of the web. Then come the think pieces about the degradation of our moral fabric. As it turns out, our moral fabric has been pretty well-degraded for a long time.

Even back when Hollywood films meant five-minute reels of clowns hitting each other with baseball bats and damsels tied to railroad tracks, stars were getting crazy. The antics of some early stars of the silver screen make the actions of our favorite ex-Disney employees seem tame. Sure, today's stars like to get naked and booze, but the rates of heroin addiction, serial adultery, and murder seem to have taken a downturn since Hollywood's Golden Age.

From serial spouses to mysterious murders, Hollywood's past is full of antics that would feed TMZ for an entire year. Once the stars got caught, they wouldn't go to rehab; they'd just have the studio PR department clean it up and get back to debauchery. Here are 20 Classic Hollywood Stars Who Make Lindsey Lohan Look Like a Saint.

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Eight marriages punctuated Liz Taylor's rocky personal life. Although almost all of her relationships ended in a train wreck, nothing seemed to be able to stop Taylor from dusting herself off and finding something crazier every time. Her first marriage to Conrad Hilton (yes, now of Mad Men fame) was marked by "gambling, drinking, and abusive behavior." Her fourth marriage began when Eddie Fisher, then married to Debbie Reynolds, consoled Taylor following the death of her third husband. Her legendary, tumultuous marriage to Richard Burton ended after two attempts and two messy divorces.

Despite Taylor's naturally poor health and an addiction to pain killers and sleeping pills that spanned half of her life, she managed to live to be almost 80 years old.

Unlike many leading ladies, Hayworth was naturally shy, keeping her stormy personal life largely under wraps. Alcoholism and a tendency towards domineering personalities created an incredibly tough home life for the starlet. No matter whether she married film directors or crown princes, her marriages tended to end in shouting matches and protracted court battles. One relationship blended into another as she would end marriages and enter new legal entanglements while still working out the details of the previous separation.

Outwardly, stress and alcohol aged Hayworth prematurely while early onset Alzheimers killed her memory. By her 50s, she couldn't even memorize lines and she spent the rest of her days in a New York apartment, her memory fading as her bank account dwindled.

Believe it or not, there were super heroes on film and television before the Internet claimed ownership over who played them. George Reeves portrayed Superman on TV back in the 50s. Though Superman can only be bested by Kryptonite, hot lead proved to be Reeves's undoing. Getting shot doesn't necessarily make you a bad boy, but if you catch a bullet after leaving your mob-connected mistress for a crazy tabloid sensation, we'll count it.

Not too long before his death, Reeves abandoned his longtime mistress Toni Mannix, who was married to MGM executive Eddie Mannix. He then became engaged to notorious party girl Leonore Lemmon who was known to be "volatile," like, shoot-guns-around-the-house-for-no-reason volatile. It turns out the Eddie was MGM's fixer, who made problems "go away," like end-up-in-a-ditch go away, and rumor has it he didn't mind so much if you slept with his wife, just so long as you didn't make her mad.

Reeves death was ruled a suicide, but the investigation was marked by dubious circumstances. Lemmon entered the house while it was a crime scene, Reeves's autopsy was botched, and the eyewitnesses were unreliable. Part of the problem was that between Eddie, Toni, Leonore, and their various associates, there were just too many suspects.

One of the few classic sex symbols to remain a household name, Marilyn Monroe set a standard for Hollywood sexuality and crazy antics that remains unmatched today. Not only was Monroe linked romantically to fellow actors, but she had relationships with luminaries in pretty much every field of her day. Her tempestuous relationships with Jo DiMaggio, John F. Kennedy, and Arthur Miller have been well-documented.

She was also the first Playboy cover girl, and boy did she have her fair share of demons. Drugs and psychological problems plagued Monroe through her many relationships. Some historians believe she may have been a schizophrenic. Though Jackie Kennedy turned a blind eye to many of JFK's indiscretions, the attention brought about by Monroe's high profile fling with the President was too much for her. By many accounts, Kennedy's rejection fueled the final slide into booze and pills that finally killed Monroe.

1940s A-lister Gene Tierney had a series of affairs during her life that made her look like a sexual Forrest Gump. She is purported to have had gone to bed with with John F. Kennedy, Howard Hughes, and actor Tyrone Power. She was first married to fashion designer Oleg Cassini and then married oilman W. Howard Lee shortly after he divorced actress Hedy Lamarr.

Though Tierney led a glamorous lifestyle early on, she also suffered from bipolar disorder which resulted in ugly mood swings and ultimately led to her being comitted. In 1953, at the urging of Humphrey Bogart, Teirney sought treatment. The treatment didn't exactly go well. Tierney attempted to flee an asylum after being subjected to over two dozen shock treatments. Several years later, Tierney walked out onto a ledge thirteen stories above ground and stood there for 15 minutes.

Though Tierney went on to do some more acting in the sixties and seventies, her career never again reached its previous heights.

A biography of Gary Cooper basically reads like this: He starred in [movie] and quickly began an affair with [co-star of said move]. Now repeat that line dozens of times. Cooper has stiff competition for biggest womanizer in Hollywood history, but the fact that Gary is rumored to have hooked up with every one of his co-stars, including fellow list members Clara Bow and Lupe Veléz, puts him pretty high in the running.

He famously began an affair with Marlene Dietrich while dating Veléz, igniting a nasty feud between the two actresses. Veléz insisted upon being on set with Cooper and Dietrich at all times and even tried to shoot him once she felt her suspicions were confirmed. Cooper continued to bed his co-stars, including Tellulah Bankhead who famously said, "The only reason I went to Hollywood was to fuck that divine Gary Cooper."

While many of the women on this list were chewed up and spit out by the tabloids or the studios, the press painted Cooper as a reformed, admired member of society, even though he continued to have affairs. Perhaps his scummiest moment came when at 47 he bedded his 21-year-old co-star Patricia Neal, and insisted she have an abortion. No, that didn't hurt his career either.

Including her first husband, whom she wed at 17, Barbara married five times. Her first marriage came after her first arrest—she was hauled in for performing burlesque at the age of 14. LaMarr was a fixture of the Hollywood club scene during her short life, and was linked to a variety of men, from dancer Robert Hobday to Arizona rancher Jack Lytell.

The parade of men alone wasn't enough excitement for LaMarr, who reportedly only slept two hours a night and was addicted to heroin throughout adulthood. LaMarr's wild life caught up with her in short order. She died at the age of 29 from tuberculosis.

Though Veléz met great professional success for much her career, the actress known as the "Mexican Spitfire" was plagued by a tumultuous personal life. Veléz engaged in a series of affairs involving a who's who of the Golden Age of Hollywood. She was linked to Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin, Errol Flynn, and Gary Cooper (who she shot at, you'll recall) and many more men during her life.

She was a jealous lover. After discovering Gable's affair with Marlene Dietrich, she threatened to rip out Dietrich's eyes given the chance. She was as protective of her career as she was her men; Delores del Rio, Velez's primary rival was afraid to meet Lupe, as she was often so biting and aggressive towards her in public, and she was not the only actress afraid of Veléz. In her mid-30s, amid rumors of a pregnancy by a married man, Veléz took her own life after overdosing on sleeping pills.

What if we were to tell you that Charlie Chaplin and Citizen Kane were involved with the same woman? No, we aren't talking about Orson Welles, who played Charles Foster Kane, but William Randolph Hearst, the inspiration for Kane. Word on the street is that Hearst and Chaplin were both seeing Davies, and Hearst was not thrilled about it. Davies was Hearst's longtime mistress, as Mrs. Hearst would not consent to a divorce without a sizable cash payout. Though they never married, the comedienne was always number one in Heart's heart. Hearst liked to remind people of this by flying into a jealous rage over Davies from time to time.

No one is exactly sure how the confrontation between Chaplain and Hearst played out, but we do know that it ended in the death of director William Ince, which no one was ever tried for. The official cause of death was listed as a "heart condition." The exact story remains unknown to this day, but the two most popular theories are that either Ince was mistaken for Chaplin and Hearst shot him or he was accidentally shot when Hearst was trying to mow down Chaplin. Due to Hearst's immense power and the fact that the cruise in question had the unofficial theme of "come cheat on your spouse in secret," witnesses were reluctant to come forward and the mystery remains unsolved.

There have been few comedic big men as talented and famous as Fatty Arbuckle. With impeccable comedic timing, the agility of a dancer, and a wonderful singing voice, he had it all in his trademark plus-sized package. Though Arbuckle was supremely talented, nothing could stop him from becoming a victim of yellow journalism. If you think that today's stars get it hard from Us Weekly, that's nothing compared to the treatment that William Randolph Hearst's papers doled out back in the day. Arbuckle liked to party, and by party we mean go on alcohol and morphine fueled benders. Though by all accounts, Arbuckle was a peaceful man, a combination of his alcoholism and ending up in the wrong place at the wrong time ruined his life.

On September 5th, 1921, the funnnyman and some friends rented three hotel rooms for a night of partying an debauchery. By the end of the night, Virginia Rappe, an aspiring actress, was dead. Though evidence has proven that Fatty hadn't really touched the woman outside of casual contact, the papers, led by Hearst, ran with the story.

Before long, it was printed that Arbuckle had raped the late Ms. Rappe with a Coca-Cola bottle in a violent attack. Though the evidence leaned strongly in Arbuckle's favor, he endured three trials as the media's accusations grew more and more extreme. Though the third trial ended with not only an acquittal, but an apology from the jury, Arbuckle's career was ruined. Arbuckle sold all his riches to pay court fees and couldn't find meaningful work for the rest of his life.

From an early age, Jean Harlow, one of the first blonde bombshells of the sound era, was well acquainted with scandal. Married to an older man by 16 and posing nude by the time she was 17, her teenage exploits were enough to make any Disney-star-turned-Spring-Breaker blush. It turns out her early activities were just a warm-up for her later exploits.

When Harlow was only 21 years old, her 43-year-old husband was found sprawled in front of a mirror, drenched in Harlow's perfume with a bullet through his head. Harlow was cleared of any involvement, and unlike most stars of early Hollywood who got involved in scandal, Harlow's fame only grew after her husband's death. Some go as far as to credit Harlow for keeping MGM afloat during the Great Depression.

Harlow herself died half a decade later in a much more mundane fashion of liver failure. The tabloids attempted to outdo each other in portraying her death as salacious as her life, but the darling of the tabloids died about as plainly as you can, from complications relating to influenza.

There have been a lot of womanizers in Hollywood history, but rarely have they been a match for Clark Gable. As one author put it, "Clark Gable was married five times, slept with nearly all of this co-stars, and cheated on everyone." Womanizing was a part of Gable's career from the very beginning. He started acting in Portland, Oregon as the result of a dalliance, when young Mr. Gable hooked up with theatre manager 17 years his senior. This started a sugar mamma trend with Gable, who quickly realized that there were a number of women out there who would pay all of his bills for him.

Living on the dime of his female admirers, Gable rose to fame and a contract with MGM, which only served to increase his lustful appetite. He was so brazenly sexual with Joan Crawford that MGM threatened to exercise the morality clause in his and her contract if they couldn't maintain decorum as they snuck around with each other. He went on to hook up with former child star Loretta Young and impregnate her, much to the chagrin of the MGM brass. Note that neither of these women were his wives, and by time he was done with Young, he was also finishing up with wife number two.

Despite Gable's reputation, women lined up for him throughout his life. As Doris Day put it, "He was as masculine as any man I've ever known, and as much a little boy as a grown man could be. It was this combination that had such a devastating effect on women."

We throw around phrases like "batshit crazy" after our favorite starlets simply engage in a little hair-pulling these days. We really ought to reserve such phrases for the likes of Frances Farmer, whose destructive mental illness hindered her career from start to finish. It wasn't too long after Farmer first made her mark on Hollywood that she started exhibiting some wild behavior.

The late 30s and early 40s were one long bender for Farmer, punctuated by several arrests. Farmer was first arrested for driving with her headlights on in a wartime blackout zone. The next year, she was hauled in for dislocating her hairdresser's jaw. At the trial for that offense, she attacked two police officers and threw an inkwell at the judge. After a stint in an asylum, she assaulted her mother.

After a decade in and out of mental institutions and a number of different treatments, Farmer attempted a comeback. The comeback was cut short as well, ending with a series of regional stage performances and arrests for drunk driving. On one occassion, she drove into a ditch drunk and addressed the arresting officer as the character she was playing in a local theater production.

It is unclear exactly what stories about Clara Bow are true and which were made up. She wronged a newspaper editor who became hellbent on blackmailing her, and as a result she got more bad press than Miley Cyrus and LiLo combined. The tabloid, The Coast Reporter, accused Bow of bestiality, incest, and of contracting a variety of venereal diseases. These accusations proved untrue, but she still got into some pretty crazy stuff.

Clara had a long string of lovers, including a marriage-ending affair with the doctor who treated her during an attempt at rehab. Gambling debts and tax evasion compounded financial problems that began early in her career when her father mismanaged her cash. Bow's dirty laundry was laid out before the public in 1930 when her ex-secretary was on trial for embezzlement. The secretary used to witness stand as a pulpit to condemn Bow with a mixture of true stories and wild fabrications. The fallout from the trial led to her early retirement from the screen in her late 20s.

Though we are continually surprised when another actress goes into a downward spiral after a failed attempt to change their image, such stories are nothing new. Linda Darnell had a solid career as a squeaky clean starlet in the 40s. She made some attempts at a more overtly sexual image (sound familiar?) and things went south from there.

In the midst of her attempts at reinvention, Darnell's business manager embezzled her lifesavings and left her flat. Darnell dove into a dark period marked by alcoholism and three failed marriages. Darnell was known as one of Hollywood's most eligible bachelorettes when she wasn't married. She was rumored to have been involved with scores of men including Howard Hughes and Joseph L. Mankeiwicz.

Though Darnell continued an active romantic life, her career began to fade. Bouts of depression marked her final years until she died in a house fire reportedly caused by falling asleep with a lit cigarette in hand in 1965.

Joan Crawford was never the sort of person to wait around for the casting couch to come to her. When Vincent Sherman was prepping his feature The Damned Don't Cry, Crawford invited him over to check out some of her previous work, and the check out a little more than that. After Sherman's wife found out, she's said to have replied, "I guess it's too much to ask of any man to turn down the opportunity to sleep with Joan Crawford."

After a rough childhood, Crawford set out to take Hollywood any way she could, which often meant using her feminine wiles to procure better roles and more close-ups. Crawford had relationships with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and scores of other less famous Hollywood types during her life.

There was another far less glamorous chapter in Crawford's fame. In 1978, one of Crawford's adopted children Christina penned Mommie Dearest, a scathing appraisal of her mother as a vicious, abusive alcoholic. Some highlights from the book include the revelation that Christina was required to call her mother's endless string of paramours "uncle," and that Joan once tore into Christine for using wire coat hangers instead of high-end padded hangers. The book, as well as the accounts of those close to her, painted her as an intensely jealous aging actress who often sabotaged her younger counterparts and was given to egotistical fits.

Her descent from fame was long and painful. After numerous attempts to stay relevant and even more affairs, she ended her days in a small New York apartment as a self-described "ex-movie star."

You know what they say, "Be an accessory to murder once, shame on me. Be an accessory to murder twice ..." Either Mabel Normand had a habit of ending up in the wrong place at the wrong time or being around her at all was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Normand was a wildly successful comedienne, a peer with Fatty Arbuckle and Charlie Chaplin both on and off-camera. The director, writer, and producer also shared Arbuckle and Chaplin's taste for trouble.

Though no one was charged in the 1922 death of filmmaker William Desmond Taylor, there is a theory that Taylor tried to take action against Normand's coke dealer and caught lead. Two years later, Normand was chilling with friend Edna Purviance and oil tycoon Courtland Dines. Purviance's chauffer believed Edna to be in trouble and shot Dines dead with Normand's gun. Though Normand was cleared of criminal charges in both cases, a combination of these scandals and persistent bouts of tuberculosis led to Normand's retirement at the age of 37.

You know the phrase "In like Flynn?" Yeah, this dude was Flynn. The rakish charmer best remembered as the original tights-wearing Robin Hood had the kind of boyish good looks that could help you get away with anything. Scratch that. It turns out he could get away with almost anything, but first a little background. Flynn started out using his charms for no good early on. He was expelled numerous times from school, including once for "bedding a laundress." Fame only fueled his taste for booze and women. Once he hit the big time, he snuck around on his wife like it was his job. The MGM PR department had that on lock though, even going as far as to have Flynn pen an essay on Hollywood morality.

Flynn was ultimately too much of a bad boy for even the best in the PR game. Things started to go downhill for Flynn and fast in the 1940s. He slapped a gossip columnist, began taking mysterious trips to Mexico, and developed an alleged taste for underage girls. A trial for two counts of statutory rape didn't stop Flynn (he beat the charges, though the evidence looks pretty grim), who continued to debauch himself so much that he is rumored to have been unfit for military service due to his raging alcoholism and collection of venereal diseases.

Eventually, Flynn's actions took a toll on him. He aged into a life of hepatitis, liver failure, and acting on television. Remember, back then they didn't make shows like Breaking Bad; television was where you went if your career broke bad.

The Rat Pack is legendary for their antics. Aspiring bad boy Hollywood bro crews are still measured in relation to the Rat Pack's debauchery. Sinatra was a legendary womanizer. It's well-known that his four marriages were just the tip of the iceberg. Sinatra was linked to Judy Garland, Lauren Bacall, and Marilyn Monroe at different points in his romantic life.

He suffered from depression which often led to alcohol, pills, and fist fights. Sinatra's brawling history is almost comical, as he exchanged blows with everyone from airport employees to casino executives. Old Blue Eyes even had significant ties to organized crime. We can't understate "significant." The F.B.I. had almost 2,500 pages of information about his ties to the mob. "His way" apparently included the a path of self-destruction that few stars could ever hope to match.

If you've ever seen a Charlie Chaplin movie, it's hard to imagine the guy was guilty of any crimes, except maybe stealing a shoe to eat or something. It turns out that the man had an appetite for more than footwear. Chaplin was not only into sex, the man was a pioneer of sexual deviance. His taste for underage women is well-documented: his wives ages were 16, 16, and 18.

He and Fatty Arbuckle are reported to have organized elaborate Hollywood orgies. Apparently, Chaplin was also one of the first pioneers of the "casting couch" method. Not only did he sleep with ladies as part of the audition process, but the man also subjected them to some truly weird shit. Film historian Kevin Browning claims, "Charles would only communicate with the actress he was auditioning via caption cards and mime, supposedly to test their ability to 'perform' in silent movies. The cards would become ever more lewd and suggestive as he got them to undress, and he would fondle their breasts in an exaggerated silent movie acting manner... eventually, he would get them to stand naked and throw custard pies at them..." That sort of puts all of our embarassing job interviews in perspective.